O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 eBook

“So George Bulmer is dead, in a London gutter!
It seems strange, because he was here, befriended
by monarchs, and very strong and handsome and self-confident,
hardly two hours ago. Is that his blood upon your
sleeve?”

“But of course not! I told you I was vexatiously
detained, almost at your gates. Yes, I had the
ill luck to blunder into a disgusting business.
The two rapscallions tumbled out of a doorway under
my horse’s very nose, egad! It was a near
thing I did not ride them down. So I stopped,
naturally. I regretted stopping, afterward, for
I was too late to be of help. It was at the Golden
Hind, of course. Something really ought to be
done about that place. Yes, and that rogue Marler
bled all over a new doublet, as you see. And
the Deptford constables held me with their foolish
interrogatories—­”

“So one of the fighting men was named Marlowe!
Is he dead, too, dead in another gutter?”

“Marlowe or Marler, or something of the sort—­wrote
plays and sonnets and such stuff, they tell me.
I do not know anything about him—­though,
I give you my word now, those greasy constables treated
me as though I were a noted frequenter of pot-houses.
That sort of thing is most annoying. At all events,
he was drunk as David’s sow, and squabbling
over, saving your presence, a woman of the sort one
looks to find in that abominable hole. And so,
as I was saying, this other drunken rascal dug a knife
into him—­”

But now, to Captain Musgrave’s discomfort, Cynthia
Allonby had begun to weep heartbrokenly.

So he cleared his throat, and he patted the back of
her hand. “It is a great shock to you,
naturally—­oh, most naturally, and does you
great credit. But come now, Pevensey is gone,
as we must all go some day, and our tears cannot bring
him back, my dear. We can but hope he is better
off, poor fellow, and look on it as a mysterious dispensation
and that sort of thing, my dear—­”

“Oh, Ned, but people are so cruel! People
will be saying that it was I who kept poor Cousin
George in London this past two weeks, and that but
for me he would have been in France long ago.
And then the Queen, Ned!—­why, that pig-headed
old woman will be blaming it on me, that there is
nobody to prevent that detestable French King from
turning Catholic and dragging England into new wars,
and I shall not be able to go to any of the court
dances! nor to the masque!” sobbed Cynthia, “nor
anywhere!”

“Now you talk tender-hearted and angelic nonsense.
It is noble of you to feel that way, of course.
But Pevensey did not take proper care of himself,
and that is all there is to it. Now I have remained
in London since the Plague’s outbreak.
I stayed with my regiment, naturally. We have
had a few deaths, of course. People die everywhere.
But the Plague has never bothered me. And why
has it never bothered me? Simply because I was
sensible, took the pains to consult an astrologer,
and by his advice wear about my neck, night and day,
a bag of dried toad’s blood and powdered cinnamon.
It is an infallible specific for men born in February.
No, not for a moment do I wish to speak harshly of
the dead, but sensible persons cannot but consider
Lord Pevensey’s death to have been caused by
his own carelessness.”